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Almost Home…

Good morning, and He Is Risen! We trust you all had a wonderful Resurrection Sunday! We celebrated our third Resurrection Sunday with our young church here in Belém, and the services went well.

We began with a “sunrise” service that started at 7:30 on Sunday, along with a fellowship breakfast time. We took all the obligatory pictures (😂), and were encouraged to see how the Lord is slowly but surely growing the church. This year we have four new families who were not with us last year, and seeing their growth over the last few months is an encouragement.

Last week, on Thursday night/Friday morning, our young people held a “vigília,” or an all-night prayer meeting. They came up with the idea and organized it themselves. My coworker and I were very pleased to see their initiative and their growing interest in spiritual things. The night was broken into hours, and each hour dedicated to a different topic of prayer. Rubens and I were tasked with giving topical devotionals at the top of each hour, dealing with the theme of the hour of prayer. I gave the first devotional, on missions, stayed up for that hour of prayer, and didn’t make it any later. But almost all the young people made it all night! (For what it’s worth, by the time they were going to bed in the morning, I had two little girls waking me up for the day!)

This week marks the halfway-point of our first academic semester of the year! This year has been flying by. It has been neat to see the fruit of the first couple years of work paying off this year as the students’ general comprehension of the Scriptures’ major themes and composition demonstrates itself. In other words: they’re starting to get it!!! And that is so exciting! Please continue praying for our students, and for growth. We have been receiving word from several local pastors indicating more young people who want to begin studying with us either later this year or next year.

We are presently doing some of the final cleaning and detail work on the house, and we hope to be moving in next Monday! Please pray all goes well. We’ll send pictures of the finished house just as soon as it’s…finished!

Thank you all again for your prayers. Please feel free to stay in touch. We have enjoyed hearing from a number of you all over the last few weeks.